


we don’t need nothing except each other (but there’s no reason to say it aloud)

by XellyChan



Series: when i said that i love you i meant that i love you forever [1]
Category: InuYasha - A Feudal Fairy Tale
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-24
Updated: 2016-11-24
Packaged: 2018-09-01 22:17:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8640271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XellyChan/pseuds/XellyChan
Summary: i’ll be here waiting for you, and my ruined pieces will match up with yours and we’ll call it home.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this started as something, then it became something completely different, only to end as something else

He kneels at her feet and pours poetry into her cupped palms.

 

He holds her hands in his, small and pale gold enveloped in his own large and calloused hands, presses his lips to the blue veins visible under the papery skin of her wrists, and whispers her name. It tastes like the sun and it burns like water in his lungs, and as he breathes in the scent of her skin, clean and bright and pure, he imagines her name etching itself on his ribs, sufficing into his bloodstream and filling him up with nothing but her.

 

“Kagome, Kagome,” he says,

 

“Only you,” he says, “only  _ you _ .”

 

( _ It’s a promise and it’s a declaration and it’s poetry and it’s all that he has to give. _ )

 

Still cupping her hands, he leans up, throat vulnerable and bare and if she was awake she’d see the tremble in his pulse, but she isn't, so he brushes his lips over the corner of her eye. Light and barely there, it’s not enough so he does it again, brushing his lips against the curve of her jaw, again under her chin, the tip of her nose, forehead. Her neck, graceful and relaxed. Peeking collar bones, delicate porcelain. He wants to paint his devotion into her skin, wants to place his sign his very soul to her’s, a mark of his own in the shape of claws and teeth and fingerprints and perspiration and scent, but he can't, so he presses one final kiss to her lips, lingering there. 

 

And he’s pulling away, slow and painful as if he’s pulling an arrowhead from his flesh, fingertips and claws skirting over hers until finally--an eternity comprised inside one precious joyless moment-- he slips away, standing tall and weary over her, still resting so sweetly tucked in the roots of a towering tree at the edge of the forest. A sighing wind blows through the clearing, swaying through strong ancient limbs, the dappled light filtering through leaves plays with shadows over her beautiful face, and Sesshoumaru is gone.

 

***

_ you left me. you left me behind and i waited for you and you never came and i was alone. _

 

_ i came back. i could not stay. _

 

_ did you want to? if you could have, would you have? would you have stayed with me? _

 

_ ….Always. Forever. _

 

***

 

In the years that are all but uncountable, his recollection of the centuries are vague; sights, scents, sounds dissolved in a swirl of memory, he remembers the day he saw her in an unnamed coastal town  with perfect, flinching, clarity. 

 

She is beautiful.

 

White lace whips around her bare ankles, black hair streaming behind her in the sea scented wind as she gazes at the waves crashing the jagged toothed shore in a bacchanalian fit. A red ribbon decorates her throat. She looks healthy, pure and untouched as the day he left her sleeping at the edge of the forest. The purity of her soul shines out from beneath her skin--still golden and smooth-- reaching out around her and even from where he stands, Sesshoumaru can feel the lingering echo of her warmth and love against his own soul. Underneath the overcast sky with its thick scrim of dishwater color clouds, Kagome glows. 

 

( _ And like the coward he never knew he was, Sesshoumaru flees. _ ) 

 

***

 

The War (one of many and indistinguishable from the rest) has taken much out of the men laying dull eyed and sallow in the barracks. Too much. It has no choice but to take the owed difference out from the few youkai left. At his back, a wolf youkai he knew from another place and another time lets out a phlegmy, rattling cough. 

 

“Fuck,” says Kouga. He is hunching over, the notches of his spine digging to Sesshoumaru’s back, transmitting every wracking jolt. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. What fucking shit.” He wipes the spittle from his lips, quirked in a bitter deprecating smile, doesn’t bother straightening, just lays his rifle on the stained cot and twists his hands restlessly from where they dangle between his knees.

 

He doesn't know why he says it, but he does. Maybe the shrapnel from the mine did more damage to his skull than the human army surgeon could find. Sesshomaru says, “I saw her, and I was afraid, and I sent her away. It was all I could do.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Kagome.”

 

Sesshoumaru feels Kouga twitch, whether in shock or anger or something else, he can not tell. The air is too foul with with death and rot and iron. He’s gone numb to everything. A long moment passes before Kouga says simply, “Oh. That’s good.”

 

Another long moment goes by, then Kouga asks,”Is she still beautiful?”

 

Sesshoumaru doesn't hesitate when he replies, “Yes.”

 

Kouga nods, pushing himself to stand on creaking, aching joints, hunched over and favoring his right side. “Then, I guess surviving would be a good idea.” Painfully he leans down to scoop up his rifle. He sets the butt down on the hard packed ground, gripping the barrel with a white-knuckled fist and, face strained and expression grim, begins to limp to the exit using the rifle as a makeshift cane.

 

Sesshoumaru doesn't bother to watch him go. He reaches inside his breast pocket, pulls out a scrap of red cloth, the pigment faded badly after centuries.

 

“Yes.”

 

***

_ i will ruin you. i will taint you and drag you down and you will be helpless because you are a child. _

 

_...okay. i don’t mind, i made my choice and i’m ready. _

 

***

 

They meet again, finally ( _ or perhaps for the first time as simply Sesshoumaru and Kagome, not as youkai and miko, not as past and future. Just Sesshoumaru and Kagome, no one and nothing else. _ ) on a lonely bench next to a children’s playground in the dying days of the last of autumn. It’s been five hundred and twenty years since they’ve sat so close to each other.

 

“So,” Kagome says, tucking a thick lock of hair behind her ear. The plain diamond stud there winks in the watery, grey light. “Are you done running?”

 

Sesshoumaru closes his eyes, tilts his face up to feel the cool breeze chap against his cheeks. He sighs, feeling old and foolish (he supposes that’s nothing new), his breath clouding his glasses with condensation. “I can not give you the things you deserve.”

 

She shakes her head, smiling a small bemused smile. “All I want,” she tells him, inching her small mitten covered hand towards his own bare hand, calloused and banded with scars. “all I’ve ever wanted was my silly run away dog. I don't need anything else.”

 

Golden eyes open, Sesshoumaru turns to face Kagome, meeting silver. Their gazes hold each other. He sees his reflection in her eyes, his face lined with the years he’s weathered. Though there isn’t much, he can still pick out the proof his age. He drags his eyes over the whole her--the sweep of dark lashes against flushed cheeks, the plush bow of her mouth, her upturned nose, petite shoulders, slender calves-- smooth and unmarred by time, and comes to a conclusion: he is mortal, and she is immortal. Youkai or not, human or not.

 

He threads his fingers with hers, her warmth seeping into the bones of him, his hardened hand fitting beautifully with hers. “What of eternity?” he asks quietly, admitting, “I cannot give you that.”

 

Kagome tilts her head and smiles, black curls tumbling sweetly.  She brings up their clasped hands to her lips, presses poetry into his knuckles, a promise, a declaration, all that she has to give. “Then I’ll give it to you.”

 

***

 

_ but i know you’d destroy yourself before you’d ever hurt me. so i’m not afraid, as long as you come back to me, i won't ever be afraid. _

 

_ i am. wretchedly so. because i am already ruined. _

 

_ don’t be. i’ll be here waiting for you, and my ruined pieces will match up with yours and we’ll call it home. _

**Author's Note:**

> side note on a bit that is hinted at but not fully explored in this: what if inuyoukai aged like dogs. Still long lived enough to span centuries (five even), but compared to other youkai species, they wear their age a little more noticeably. Something to explore another time. Or never. Banking on never.


End file.
